Edit: In my haste to post my write-up of these first two days of the conference, I didn’t do much in the way of linking and I forgot to write about one of the coolest things that happened on Saturday, the flying robot blimp. Bear with me as I edit this post to add some much needed links and visuals.

Friday, July 10, 2009

After work, I walked over to the Metropolitan Hotel to get my badge. My kit included a schedule, a large poster, a crimson t-shirt with black Russian-propaganda style Future Ruby logo, a bottle of water, a pack of matches, a patch with the Future Ruby logo on it (for sewing on to backpacks and the like) and a TTC pass valid for the length of the convention. All of this was stuffed inside of a rugged, dark green bag with the Future Ruby patch sewn on it. This is by and far the best swag I’ve ever received at a conference, ever.

After that, I got dinner and headed down to Unspace HQ for a wicked awesome patio party. Unspace HQ seems like an incredible place to work — prime location, lots of outdoor space, and a pretty nice collection of knick knacks, including a working pinball machine — but it is also an excellent space for a party. The highlight of the night for me was seeing two CF18’s doing a fly-by. Although I’m not a huge fan of military hardware, watching the way that they turned through the air was a unique experience.

I went home early to give myself enough time to commute home and get at least 5-6 hours of sleep for the next day.

3 Responses to “FutureRuby – Days 1 & 2”

I have a list of reasons as to why I am so happy I was able to convince Misha to run his experimental sound workshop at FutureRuby. You are correct to remember that it’s a conference for Rubyists, but that’s just the beginning.

It fit in with just about every running theme, effectively serving as the “rug that tied the room together”. He programmed the audience like cellular automatons, we implemented a take on the game of life, we played around with programming concepts including but not limited to: message passing, edge detection, recursion, polling, and state machines.

Most importantly, we were forced to engage each other instead of our laptops, using a communication method that makes many attendees deeply uncomfortable. It’s hard to hide from what happened in the room.

Finally, we created a shared experience that you really truly had to be present to fully understand.

I got the obvious ones, being programmed like cellular automatons and running a Game of Life simulation, but the others ones I didn’t notice. Thinking back on the session, I realize that you’re absolutely right. It’s interesting how many things are very similar to programming computers if you look at them in just the right way. In any case, it was definitely a unique experience. Judging from some of the post-conference tweets I’ve been seeing, it is also poised to become an Unspace conference in-joke. =)

I’ve noticed that recent events you’ve organized have had an element of direct (i.e. without computer/laptop/smartphone) communication. Do you feel like there is a lack of face-to-face, direct communication in the Ruby community? In my experience, Rubyists seem quite sociable, but maybe I’m only interacting with the ones who are sociable.